Peace visit
Francis, who plans to push for peace, will also head to Bangladesh
Pope Francis, who has concerns for Rohingya, will head to Myanmar and Bangladesh.
YAngon: Pope Francis will push for peace during his visit to Myanmar, a church official said, a trip that plunges the pontiff into the centre of a simmering religious conflict which has sparked an exodus of Muslim Rohingya.
Myanmar’s Western Rakhine state has been torn apart by communal bloodshed, sending more than 520,000 Rohingya racing over to neighbouring Bangladesh since late August.
The leader of the world’s Catholics will visit both nations on a highly politically charged trip in late November – although there are currently no plans to stop in strife-torn Rakhine or the refugee camps in Bangladesh.
“We don’t know yet what will be in his speech, but he is coming for the sake of the country and he will be talking about peace,” Father Mariano Soe Naing, a spokesman for the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of Myanmar said.
“There won’t be any interfaith meetings (in Myanmar) because of the lack of time.”
He will talk with de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize laureate who sparked international dismay for her perceived lack of sympathy towards the Rohingya and unwillingness to condemn alleged atrocities by the army.
The UN has accused Myanmar’s military of using a crackdown on Rohingya militants to expel the entire Muslim minority – a persecuted group the Pope has previously called “brothers and sisters”.
Authorities have denied that charge and accused Rohingya insurgents of terrorising ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Hindus in Rakhine.
Any further comments from the Pope seen as expressing support for the Rohingya could provoke a backlash from the Buddhist-majority public, who loathe the Muslim minority and have railed against global support for the group.
Some 200,000 people are expected to attend a mass led by Francis in Kyaikkasan Grounds, a stadium in Yangon, Father Mariano added.
After Myanmar, the Pope will head to Bangladesh, which has had to absorb more than half a million Rohingya refugees in squalid border camps, putting a significant strain on the two countries’ ties.
Myanmar has a small roughly half a million Catholic population, mainly in the remote north.
The South-East Asian nation and the Vatican only established full diplomatic relations in May, shortly after Suu Kyi met Pope Francis during a European tour.
That visit was overshadowed by her country’s treatment of the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship and have previously been displaced in huge numbers by communal violence and army campaigns.
Only weeks before the meeting Francis described the Muslim minority as “brothers and sisters” who were being tortured and killed for their faith. — AFP
YANGON: Rohingya Muslims are not native to Myanmar, the army chief told the US ambassador in a meeting in which he apparently did not address accusations of abuses by his men and said media was complicit in exaggerating the number of refugees fleeing.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing gave his most extensive account of the Rohingya refugee crisis aimed at an international audience in the meeting with Ambassador Scot Marciel, according to a report posted on his Facebook page.
The general is the most powerful person in Buddhist- majority Myanmar and his apparently uncompromising stance would indicate little sensitivity about the military’s image over a crisis that has drawn international condemnation and raised questions about a transition to democracy under Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
The military campaign is popular in Myanmar, where there is little sympathy for the Rohingya, and where Buddhist nationalism has surged.
Min Aung Hlaing, referring to Rohingya by the term “Bengali”, which they regard as derogatory, said British colonialists were responsible for the problem.
“The Bengalis were not taken into the country by Myanmar, but by the colonialists,” he told Marciel, according to the account of the meeting posted yesterday.
“They are not the natives, and the records prove they were not even called Rohingya but just Bengalis during the colonial period.”
The UN human rights office said on Wednesday Myanmar security forces had brutally driven out half a million Rohingya from northern Rakhine state to Bangladesh, torching their homes, crops and villages to prevent them from returning.
Coordinated Rohingya insurgent attacks on some 30 security posts on Aug 25 sparked a ferocious military response.
The UN rights office said in its report, based on 65 interviews with Rohingya who had arrived in Bangladesh, that abuses had begun before the Aug 25 attacks and included killings, torture and rape of children.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley last month denounced what she called a “brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority” and called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar until its military puts sufficient accountability measures in place.
The European Union and the United States are considering tar- geted sanctions against Myanmar’s military leaders, officials familiar with the discussions said this week.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has described the government operations as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and said the action appeared to be “a cynical ploy to forcibly transfer large numbers of people without possibility of return”.
Min Aung Hlaing did not refer to such accusations, according to the published account, but said the insurgents had killed 90 Hindus and 30 Rohingya linked to the government.
Insurgents’ opposition to a citizenship verification campaign, which used the term Bengali, was behind the attacks, he said.
“Local Bengalis were involved in the attacks under the leadership of ARSA. That is why they might have fled as they feel insecure,” he said, referring to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army insurgents.
“The native place of Bengalis is really Bengal.” — Reuters